Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury

‘Be a Goldfish’ – The Wisdom of Ted Lasso for Lawyers

June 8, 2021 | BY HEATH CHEEK

Like everyone else during the pandemic, my an opposing party needs to get out of a wife and I binged a lot of television at night after transaction and even how to get the best out of exhausting days of working while watching our our colleagues. two kids. But by late fall, we had run out of shows. Be a happy warrior. Then we found Ted Lasso on Apple TV+, which we binged over two nights. The premise is that “We’ve got 90 minutes to prove them wrong.” Ted Lasso, an American college football coach, Ted gets criticized and called dirty names becomes an English Premier League football throughout the series, but never once does (aka soccer) coach. Despite not knowing the he retaliate or show anger. Instead, he slightest thing about soccer (like me), Ted wins understands why they are calling him names over the team, its owners and the fans with his and realizes that the best way to change minds unorthodox coaching style. is through results. What is striking about the show is not its Our Texas Lawyers’ Creed tells us that we can humor (it is really funny though), it’s the heart “disagree without being disagreeable.” But and message of the show. The show has great too often the members of our profession use lessons on leadership, empathy, morality and disagreement as evidence of bad motive and ethics to help us become better attorneys and every negative statement as an opportunity to colleagues. Recently, I was proud to teach a tee off. It often creates a negative cycle from CLE course on leadership lessons from Ted both sides. How many times have you had to Lasso to the Dallas – Fort Worth Chapter of endure a “beat the chest” speech by opposing the Association of Corporate Counsel, which I counsel about why their side is pure as snow attempt to summarize here. and your side is evil? But, how many times have you actually seen “chest beating” work? For Ted, he’d just smile, not respond and say, “Let’s Lead with empathy. prove them wrong.” “For me, success is not about the wins and losses. It’s about helping these young fellas be Be curious, not judgmental. the best versions of themselves on and off the field.” Ted knows nothing about soccer, but he is In one of the most famous scenes of the show, still an effective leader because he understands Ted makes a bet over a game of darts with the the people on the team, from the waterboy to former owner of the team, Rupert Mannion. As the owner. He does this through engaging in Ted is beating him at darts, he says: a genuine effort to get to know each of them. Rather than barking orders at the team to enact You know, Rupert, guys have underestimated his will, Ted tries to understand what each of me my entire life. And for years, I never those people needs to reach their full potential. understood why. It used to really bother me. But then one day, I was driving my little boy to As attorneys, showing kindness and empathy school and I saw this quote by Walt Whitman. … is probably not our default position. But there’s It said, “Be curious, not judgmental.” I like that. a difference between empathy and sympathy. So I get back in my car … and all of a sudden Empathy is understanding someone by seeing it hits me. All them fellas that used to belittle the world through their point of view. This skill me, not a single one of them were curious. is important for attorneys for several aspects You know, they thought they had everything of our jobs, including being able to understand all figured out. So they judged everything, and how opposing counsel may argue a case, what they judged everyone. … ‘Cause if they were

© 2021 The Texas Lawbook curious, they would’ve asked questions. … Like, ‘Have you played a lot of darts, Ted?’ Ted ends up winning the darts game. This is a common theme in the show, where Ted is underestimated but only because people failed to ask questions. Too often, attorneys get caught in this trap. This is a profession filled with Type A personalities where we all have supreme amounts of confidence. But hubris is different from confidence, and often quite self- destructive. To be effective you have to know what you are up against and you can only know that by being curious.

Empower your people.

“He’s the one, coach. If we’re going to make an impact here, the first domino that needs to fall is in that man’s heart.” Ted spends most of the episodes trying to empower the rest of the team to be leaders. One of his first missions is to turn around Roy Kent, the past-his-prime team captain. Ted doesn’t delegate tasks to Roy, but instead empowers him to take on leadership of the team and handle things as a player-coach. As attorneys, all we have to sell is our time (of which there is a finite amount). The only way to expand your reach is by having people you trust who can not only perform tasks, but can take ownership for you. You cannot micromanage someone into owning a matter. You have to empower and trust them.

Be a goldfish.

“You know what the happiest animal in the world is? It’s a goldfish. It’s got a 10-second memory.” This is a clever repackaging of some ancient wisdom (i.e., Matthew 6:27: “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”), but it’s incredibly important for attorneys.

How many nights have you laid in bed, unable to fall asleep because of some worry facing you on one of your matters? We have inherently stressful jobs with real consequences for our clients; but, having the ability to divorce the incident’s emotions from the way to learn from it, is a gift to our own mental health.

Heath Cheek is a complex commercial litigation partner at Bell Nunnally. He can be reached at [email protected], or via the firm’s website: https://www.bellnunnally. com.

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